


You Are

by Asynca



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Addiction, Cheating, Depression, Extremely Rough Sex, F/F, Infidelity, Moicy, Raptoramaker, Speedy Recovery, Violence, adult themes????, age gap, controversial topics???
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2018-12-10 03:43:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11683320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asynca/pseuds/Asynca
Summary: A series of sexual vignettes involving different couples that address very problematic aspects of their relationships.





	1. You Are Widowmaker (Pharah/Widowmaker)

 

#  **You Are Widowmaker**

* * *

 

 

It all started when the Amari girl punched you.

You deserved it. You’d been picking at her for weeks—under your breath, across comms, across the cafeteria table. She’s nothing like her mother. She’ll never be her mother: she’ll never be as sharp as her, as skilled as her… as _liked_ as her.

Amari had been boiling over. You could _feel_ her rage, her glare, her seethe, so when her fist finally connected with your jaw it was almost a relief.

You stand, touching fingers to the edge of your mouth and inspecting them for blood. Their tips are red. Hah. “I bet that felt good,” you tell her. “I bet it felt good to punch the words you know you can’t fight any other way.”

In a second, she has a fistful of the fabric at your throat and you’re crushed up against the concrete wall of the hangar by her heavy body. You can feel every single one of her muscles taut and ready to strike again. When she speaks, it’s with so much passion and so close to your face that little droplets of spittle touch your skin. “I love my mother,” she says, her voice low. “I’m _proud_ of her. I’m _proud_ to be Captain Amari’s daughter.”

“And if only she was as proud of you,” you fire back, and watch the shock on her face. “It’s entertaining, watching you practically _beg_ for her attention. Watching you be interrupted, and shushed, and—”

She punches you again, and you let her. You let her fall to the floor on top of you, straddling you, thick, strong thighs on either side of your hips. Her hands are around your neck. She’s on the verge of choking you, her fingers are curled around your neck and her thumbs are digging into the skin of your throat. She looks satisfied by the veins popping out on your forehead, comforted by it, even. But she’s put off by your smirk, though. “Of course you’re enjoying this,” she spits, looking disgusted.

You can barely move air through your throat. “Admit it, you’re enjoying it too,” you tell her. “You _like_ hurting me. It feels good doesn’t it?”

She leans forward, heavy brow low over her eyes. “Yes,” she says, “it always feels good to give people what they deserve.”

And that’s how it started. With her choking you, and you, semi-conscious and swimming in fog and light, reflecting how much you deserve it. How much you deserve it if she doesn’t stop.

She does, though. She does, and she looks _guilty_. Roughly pulling you to stand while your ears are still ringing, she yells, “ _Fight me properly_!” She looks desperate.

Because you’re rather enjoying seeing her lose control, you do. It ends up with her on top of you again. Her anger, her desperation. She looks both guilty and frustrated, her punches and your tussles not giving her the satisfaction she expected. “I should just turn you over to the authorities,” she says, but it’s half-hearted.

“No,” you tell her, loving her weight on top of you. “I think you should punish me, Amari. It’s your family that I hurt. It’s you that I wronged. I think you deserve compensation, don’t you...?” You wrestle a hand free and pull her down to you. Your lips touch for a fraction of a second before she balks and wrenches away, looking horrified.

“What—?” She crawls off you, looking at you like you’ve grown another head, and then rushes away as fast as she can.

She returns that night, catching you alone in the armoury. She’s drunk, red-eyed, and angry. She’s one of those women who looks incredibly hot when she’s angry. “We hate each other,” she says. It’s almost a question.

You walk up to her calmly, like you’re issuing a challenge. “Yes,” you tell her, looking her right in the eyes. “We do.”

Her eyes dip to your body; it’s hot, you’re not wearing much. She’s drunk, lonely, and _angry_ , and she knows you’re offering. In a second, she’s up against you. Her lips taste like beer as she presses them firmly against yours. Her hands hover at your middle—she’s used to being gentle with lovers, you can tell—but you correct that. You guide them to tear at your singlet and she follows your lead, her movements getting rougher and rougher. Her hands threading through your hair, pulling it. Her fingernails _scraping_ down your back and her palm pressing your cheek against the wall.

Then, she pushes you to your knees on the concrete floor and makes you fuck her. Her muscles shine with sweat, her legs shake and her teeth grit as you do. She’s hot—so hot, and looking up her body at the woman making your lips strain and your knees ache as she comes is so hot. She doesn’t let you stop, either. She makes you keep going and going until you have cramps in your jaw and pins and needles in your legs, and then she shoves you away, pulling up her slacks.

Again, she looks a mixture of guilty and frustrated. “What on earth am I doing?” she asks herself rhetorically, shaking her head down at you like she can’t believe what you’ve both just done.

You wipe your mouth on your hand very, very slowly as you smirk up at her. You make sure she remembers exactly where your lips have just been.

She looks disgusted, horrified even, as she shakes her head incredulously down at you. “I must be clinically insane,” she spits, and then turns to leave—bracing herself against the wall so her legs which are trembling from both alcohol and exertion don’t collapse beneath her.

But you know she’ll be back. She always comes back, even if she _hates_ that she does.

There’s no better punching bag than one who deserves it, one who can fight back, and one who can fuck you afterwards.


	2. You Are Mercy (Mercy/Tracer)

 

# You Are Mercy

* * *

 

Overwatch is crumbling, and you know it. Jack and Gabriel have been fighting all day—you can hear it across the other side of Swiss HQ, even from all the way down here in your lab.

It’s been a long day and a very taxing evening, and the final straw was when you went to check on the cultures you’d been nursing for nearly a month and discover you’ve accidentally set the thermostat wrong and killed them all.

You lean over the lab table, eyes closed for a moment. Of course this happened. You should have expected you’d end up making this sort of mistake. After all, nootropics—even the best designer cocktails of them in the world—are a poor substitute for actual, quality sleep. You know that. And you know if you burn the candle at both ends, of course you end up making terminal mistakes, don’t you?

It’s just—God. You’d put so much work into them. It had been so much work to extract them and isolate them, and now…

…now you were back to square one. All because you couldn’t take your own damn advice and get some actual sleep.

And you’re tired, and alone, and _nothing ever works and you always do this to yourself_ and—well, who was there to blame but yourself? Subconsciously sabotaging your own work by thinking you could continue to cheat biology? Biology had exacted its revenge. Now, you had to start the cultures all over again.

And now, on top of that, you’re apparently going to _cry_ over it.

Ordinary people wouldn’t cry because they’d killed some bacteria. Ordinary people would just take the samples out and start isolating them again. Then again, ordinary people had had more than 3 hours sleep in 48, ordinary people had friends to call, families to go home to, children to hug, and ordinary people weren’t alone at 1am in labs on a Sunday night, ruining the only thing in their lives that mattered.

You wipe tears from your eyes, shaking your head at yourself. This is ridiculous. All your hormones are just out of whack—you haven’t slept. You’ve depleted your serotonin, your cortisol is probably sky high, you have no idea where you are in your menstrual cycle because it hasn’t been regular since you started your PhD, but you’re probably premenstrual as well… it’s all hormones. It’s all just hormones. It’s not real.

Hormones or not, you end up leaning against the counter, sobbing. You’re tired, you’re so tired. You’ve been up trying to get these last few experiments done just right, and you’ve made this silly rookie mistake and ruined the whole lot of them and of course you’ve ruined them. You ruin everything.

“Dr Ziegler?” That’s Lena’s voice.

You hold your breath for a moment, opening your eyes and looking forward at your reflection in the window.

She’s behind you in the doorway, wearing her comically big Overwatch jumper—she needed to get a few sizes up so it would fit over her accelerator. It’s so big that it comes nearly down to her knees and the sleeves are too long. It makes her look even thinner and smaller than she already is.

She looks worried. “I was just going to check if you wanted a bite to eat, because you’ve been in here all day, and, well…” She swallowed. _…and you were hoping I’d have dinner with you_ , you know she’s thinking, _and then you found me sobbing over a few pallets of dead bacteria._

You exhale at length. There’s an implicit question in her comment. “I’m alright,” you promise her, trying to sound cheerful. “I just made a silly mistake in my experiment and it’s set me back a few weeks, that’s all.”

She watches you for a moment. She knows that’s not all. How could it be all? Jack and Gabriel have been at war with each other for weeks. The whole facility is at a stand-off over their pending decommissioning.

Her voice is quiet when she speaks. “I heard them too,” she says quietly. “They’ve been at it all day. Commander Morrison broke a window and turned his desk over, as well.”

You don’t know how to respond to that. You feel numb; this place has been your home for a decade. The first real home since you lost your parents at seven.

You can’t think about it.

Tentative footsteps approach you. “Well, come and have something to eat, at least? I tried to make Älplermagronen,” she says, pronouncing it wrong. “I’m complete rubbish at cooking, but I thought you might like it anyway…?”

Your heart aches at that. It’s a lovely thing for her to do—cook something Swiss especially for you. Lena is full of little things like that. She thinks of others; but you know she especially thinks of you. It’s something you’ve been avoiding, really. She’s 11 years younger than you, barely in her 20s. You’d rather avoid the issue. But you can’t really avoid this—she’s cooked Swiss food for you. It would be rude to refuse, even though you know she wouldn’t hold it against you if you did.

Well, it was only a meal, wasn’t it? There was no harm in eating. “That sounds nice,” you tell her, and watch her face immediately light up. It’s so endearing.

She leads you back to her tiny bedsitter in Overwatch HQ where she’s already set up a little table with salt and pepper, wine, and two mismatched plates facing each other on the table.

“Just in case you _did_ say you were hungry!” she explains with a bright smile, and then leads you to sit down while she merrily chatters about her struggles with the Älplermagronen and heaps you a big serve of it.

It’s been years since you’ve had it, and you can’t really remember how it’s supposed to taste. But you’re hungry, and she’s getting so much enjoyment out of watching you eat it that you do eat most of it. It feels like such a domestic thing to do, eating dinner and chatting with someone. It’s so nice being attended to, as well. The way Lena looks at you is both concerning and comforting; and she’s sweet, really. She fills your wine glass after you’ve drained it, and looks with concern at the portion of macaroni you’ve left on your plate. “Not the way you remember it, is it? Sorry about that. I never was much of a cook. I don’t even know how it’s supposed to turn out.”

You chuckle. “It was lovely.” You know she can hear the compliment is genuine.

You watch a series of emotions play across her face. “Really?” You smile at her and nod, and her cheeks flush with pleasure. “I hoped you’d like it,” she confesses, looking absolutely delighted. She clears your plate and glass, and pushes her big, floppy sleeves up her arms like she’s about to wash up.

It occurs to you it would be quite rude to just sit and watch her, so you stand. “Let me wash the dishes, it’s the least I can do after you cooked me a lovely meal…” You step in beside her, expecting her to move.

Stubbornly, she doesn’t. “No way! I invited you up here!”

“And cooked for me, and so it’s my turn to—”

“Nope,” she takes you by the arms to march you away from the sink and sit you back down in your chair, “you sit down and relax, I’ll handle it!”

Her expression is so determined, and she’s being so very bossy that you can’t help but just laugh after she’s pushed you to sit. She’s so earnest, and so very likeable. You always liked her.

She looked confused at the laugh for a moment and her cheeks go pink again—but there’s a smile trying to make its way onto her lips. She has the biggest puppy dog eyes you’ve ever seen—such lovely big eyes. You touch her face, you can’t help it. She’s so sweet. The wine doesn’t help much, either.

Before you know it, she’s cupped your cheeks and she’s staring at your lips with an intensity you really, really shouldn’t ignore, but do anyway—just for a moment. It’s nice to have someone looking at you like that, and Lena is rather a nice person to be doing it.

Because you don’t stop her, she leans down and kisses you.

You don’t stop her then, either. Her lips are warm. Her hands on your cheeks are warm. She’s very gentle; and she inhales deeply as she kisses you, filling her lungs and holding her breath. She’s afraid you’ll stop her, but you don’t.

Neither of you stop. She keeps kissing you, and because she’s bending at a bit of a strange angle, it only seems natural that you pull her into your lap. She straddles you—light, so light, she weighs so little—still holding your face. “You’re so beautiful,” she whispers into your lips, and then kisses them again.

It’s more intoxicating than the wine, being kissed like this, especially after so long. Her accelerator is a little bulky and is wedged between you, but it’s still nice to be this close to someone. She wraps her arms around your neck and your head and holds you close to her and it’s just so nice to be held by someone. Especially by someone as attentive as Lena.

She’s had a crush on you for a long time, you know—you’ve seen the sideways glances. The gazes, the pink cheeks when you’ve complimented her. She’s probably been longing for the opportunity to kiss you, and you can feel that desperation in her touch, and you can hear it in the faint, gentle little whimpers she’s making when the blades of your tongues brush. It means a lot to her.

What does it mean to you?

It’s nice, you think. It’s nice. It feels good, and you’ve had such a terrible day. Everything is falling apart; your experiments are ruined and—it feels nice to have someone familiar touching you. It’s not as if you’re not enjoying it, but—

When you part briefly, when she kisses along your jaw and your neck in a way that makes you sigh, you can see the devotion in her eyes. She adores you. She looks up to you so much. She’s so close to saying she loves you—you can see it on her face—and this means so much to her, in a ‘first love’ sort of way.

It doesn’t mean the same to you, not at all. You exhale; you have to stop her. You really have to stop her, and you do.

The devotion in her eyes fades quickly to panic. “What’s wrong?”

You shake your head. “We shouldn’t do this, Lena.”

“Why not?”

Why not… “It’s just… we shouldn’t.” You motion that you’d like to get up.

She doesn’t let you. “Why not, though?” she asks, audible. “Is it because I’m only twenty? Because I’ve been through a lot, most twenty year olds haven’t got lost in time, have they? And I don’t even know how long I’ve lived, really!”

You grimace at the reminder. That’s definitely a large part of it, and you don’t really know how to articulate ‘you’re in love with me and I’m not in love with you’ in a way that isn’t very hurtful.

Your silence only fuels her resolve. “You’re enjoying it,” she says almost like an accusation. “I can feel that you like it. Why stop? Nothing matters anymore, anyway. Overwatch isn’t going to be around much longer.”

Every word she says contributes more to your feeling you shouldn’t be doing anything with her—but she’s also right. You won’t be working alongside her much longer, and you were enjoying it. You would really like to take her to bed and enjoy being close to another person. But you shouldn’t. God, you shouldn’t.

“It’s—well, my feelings are a little different than yours,” you attempt, trying to explain the discrepancy in your feelings in a way that doesn’t hurt her.

She surprises you. “I know,” she says frankly. “Of course I know. But I still want you. I want this.”

Oh, god. You can feel your resolve fading as fast as Overwatch is. “Lena, no,” you tell her. It’s a last-ditch attempt. “This isn’t right, I’m taking advantage of you.”

She scoffs at your wording. “No you’re bloody not,” she tells you, thinking it’s the truth. “ _I_ seduced _you_. How is that you taking advantage of me?”

You’re running out of energy to argue, and you’re tired— _so_ tired. She doesn’t even know what she doesn’t know, and you can’t figure out how to explain it.

“I’m an adult,” she insists in a most un-adult way, cupping your face in her warm hands again. “Let me decide what I can and can’t handle.” She kisses you.

You’re tired, and you just let her. Even though you know it’s wrong, even though you know all the reasons it’s wrong, you let her. And it feels nice, so you give up fighting.

You let her kiss you, touch you. You let her unbutton your shirt and pull off her own jumper, and you let her lead you a few paces to her bed where she undresses the rest of you. You help her unfasten her accelerator and place it beside you both, and then you embrace her, skin on skin, arms around each other, and make slow, gentle love in her single bed.

She’s so reverent of you. She touches you like you really are an angel, and that you might disappear under her hands at any moment. She cries about how good it feels, and then, later, laughs with you as you explore each other and find all the spots that she’s ticklish.

There will probably be long term consequences for doing this—but at this moment, you don’t care. Being this close to another person is what you needed, being _loved_ is what you needed, and Lena is only too happy to try and give you everything you need, even if she ultimately can’t in the long run. Even if you both know she can’t in the long run.

She strokes your back as you fall asleep in her arms, planting slow, warm kisses on your forehead. You know she’ll watch you while you’re asleep, unable to believe that you’re really there in her bed, and hoping—wishing, with all her heart—that by sharing your bodies with each other that your feelings will change.

You let her hope that, because it seems cruel not to. But it’s going to be a hard lesson for her later when your feelings don’t change.

You don’t want to think about it. There are a lot of things you really don’t want to think about, so you don’t. You close your eyes, and let her love you to sleep.

 

 


	3. You Are Mercy (Mercy/Moira) - 'Relapse'

 

You shouldn’t be doing this, you know you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t even be here.

There’s no one in the labs; it’s so quiet you can hear the mice running in their wheels next door. It’s so quiet you can hear the dull beat of music from the very distant charity ball hosted in the refurbished auditorium. And, when you shift your weight against the stainless-steel bench, you can hear the fabric of your fancy sky blue satin dress hiss against the metal.

 _You’re married, Angela_ , you tell yourself, twisting your wedding ring anxiously. You’re married to the most wonderful, the most kind-hearted, the most thoughtful woman on the planet. A woman who would sooner cut off her own hand rather than raise it against you, who would do anything for you—well, almost anything.

 _Oh, would you listen to yourself,_ you scold that voice, _this is nonsense_. _You’re 37, not some bright-eyed, bushy-tailed 26 year old anymore: go on, go back to the party._ There were people waiting on you there, eager to fawn over you and discuss your future projects now that Overwatch had been recommissioned, and in a couple of hours, you’ll be tucked in bed with your beautiful wife.

Despite telling yourself that, despite repeating it to yourself over and over and over again, you don’t move.

You wait. You listen.

When you hear those familiar footsteps, your heart flutters in your chest, just like it did when you locked eyes with her unexpectedly across the crowded auditorium a few minutes ago. _Moira_?! You’d only gotten as far as mouthing the ‘M’, both because you weren’t sure _why_ you’d be excited—How _dare_ she come to an Overwatch function! How _dare_ she show her face here again!—and because she was wearing a fitted men’s suit she looked positively breath-taking in. Frozen, you’d stood there, stunned and unsure how to react. Before you recovered; she inclined her head towards the far door. It was a subtle movement, probably no one else noticed it. You’d known what it meant.

And so you were waiting for her here in the labs, the green emergency light from the ‘EXIT’ sign the only light, _finally_ hearing the confident slap of those expensive men’s dress shoes against the linoleum in the corridor.

 _Tell her no, tell her you make a mistake coming here_! The sensible part of you screams as the footsteps get closer. _Don’t do this, Angela! Go back to the party! Go back to Fareeha while you still can_! _Moira’s a horrible person, what are you doing_?!

You don’t move, though. In fact, leaning forward on the bench, you take a careful breath, unable to take your eyes off the door handle.

Her footsteps pause outside the door. For a moment, everything is silent. _Maybe she won’t come in_ , you think, equal parts relieved and disappointed.

But she does. The handle tilts and the breath catches in your throat. It’s her.

She steps inside so casually, closing the door behind her with a click. You’re alone together. The fact she’s in this room with you again after so many years—what has it been, nearly a decade?—is intoxicating. Even though she’s not looking at you, she radiates presence and charisma, and she looks a million dollars in that expensive suit. You’d forgotten how tall she was. In the tailored dress suit, she looks even taller.

She has an easy grin on her face. A smug, easy grin. Slinging her hands in her pockets, she does a slow circuit of the room as if you aren’t even there, examining the equipment, pausing to skim-read the light board where you’ve been scribbling your recent results and brainstorming, circling around to the back of the lab.

When she’s behind you, she stops. For a moment, all you can hear are the mice running in the wheels next door. You can’t even hear your own breath because you’re holding it.

“Hello, Angela.”

You lips part a little. It’s been so long since you’ve heard that voice. Not that you’d really thought about it, but you didn’t expect to hear it again. “What are you doing here?”

She chuckles just once. “You know, I could ask you much the same thing.” She takes a step towards you. She’s close now. There’s maybe a metre, half a metre between you both. You can almost _feel_ the weight of her eyes on the bare back of your neck. “Would you believe me if I said I came to see how you are?”

What a question. Nothing Moira does is for anyone else. “No.”

This time, she laughs. It’s genuine amusement. “Fair,” she acknowledges. “I came because I was invited.”

You don’t believe her for a second. “Overwatch would _never_ invite a disgraced ex-scientist.”

Your insult washes off her like water off a duck’s back. “Perhaps not. But they’ll invite Oasis’ Ministry, including the Minister of Genetics. Besides,” she says, taking another small step towards you. She’s so close now you can feel the heat from her body on your back even though she’s not against it. “I _am_ curious what you up to out here, truth be told.”

She’s silent again. She lets the silence stretch, unbothered by it, while you wait what feels like an _eternity_ for her to say something else. “So, what _are_ you up to, Angela…?” You can tell by her tone of voice that she doesn’t mean your research.

You lick your lips slowly. You shouldn’t be here, you should be getting ready to head home to your _wife._ _Fareeha,_ you think, imagining her innocently going about her day with no idea where you are and what you’re about to do. You try not to think about that. “I don’t know.”

“Well, now. That’s a lie, isn’t it?”

Oh, god. She’s so good at this. “Yes.”

She chuckles again. You hear the movement of fabric, and then you feel her brush a few lose strands of hair away from your neck, her perfectly manicured nails running lightly along your skin. You inhale sharply—a movement she can’t miss—and you can almost _feel_ her grin. 

She steps against you, her front pressed against your half-bare back, pinning you against the bench. Now, when you breathe, she can feel it. You can feel her inhaling, too: slowly, calmly. She probably knows you’re holding your breath.

Her mouth, her long and regal nose dip to the nape of your neck. Her lips are so close to your skin that you close your eyes. She doesn’t kiss you straight away; she draws her lips and her nose _so lightly_ across your skin, across your neck, your bare shoulders, inhaling deeply. “You’re wearing the same perfume you used to,” she notes, but reserves her judgment. Your head lolls helplessly to the side as she trails her lips along your neck, under your ear. You flop your head back against her shoulder as she kisses along your jaw and chin.

You’re running out of time to stop what she’s doing—what you’re letting her do—as it accelerates towards disaster. _Stop her_! you shout helplessly at yourself as she threads her fingers in your hair and twists your head towards her. _Stop her_!

You don’t though. You do nothing, letting her kiss along your chin towards your mouth.

Just before she reaches your lips, she stops suddenly. You’re panting, each breath you take pushing against her front. Her lips stretch into a dark, dark smile. “Angela,” she says. There’s both a touch of school teacher and a touch of smug teenager in her voice. “You’ve been _drinking_.”

You have been. You couldn’t come out here sober—well, there was also that one glass with dinner, since Fareeha wasn’t here and since it seemed impolite to refuse the champagne offered to you… Not that you even tried to.

“Does she know you’ve been drinking again?”

You know who ‘she’ is. “No.” You couldn’t tell Fareeha. She’s so proud how far you’ve come with alcohol.

That smugness again. “Are you going to tell her?”

God. “No.”

She chuckles again. This close, you can hear how deep the south is in her throat. “She doesn’t need to know everything, does she, Angela? At least, that’s what you’re going to tell yourself. I can hear you say it: what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her.”

Your eyes are still closed, and you clench them for a moment. She’s right, and it makes you sick to your stomach and weak at the knees. It makes that familiar feeling—that feeling you and your therapist have worked so hard to conquer—ooze back into your stomach like a creature from the deep. It takes root there, whispering things about yourself to you. Things you know you’re not supposed to listen to.

But you do. You _do_ listen to them. You listen to them and you let this woman, this _awful_ woman, stay close to you, in the same breath as you wish you could shove her away and walk out.

She was a curse 10 years ago and she’s a curse now. “I _hate_ you, Moira.”

She _laughs_. “I’m sure you do,” she says almost pleasantly, and then her lips are your ear again, her breath tickling it. “But deep down, you hate someone else even more.” Her fingers slip softly, slowly back up into your hair and then suddenly tighten, pulling _hard._ You gasp, surrendering. It’s too late.

She’s rough with you when she fucks you. She grips your hair until your eyes water, your neck, your wrists so tightly that your hands tingle, and she leaves red marks on your skin that you’re terrified will take longer than an hour to fade. You can’t stop her though—or, more honestly, you could stop her, but you don’t.

You let her force you back onto the workbench, pulling the pretty satin dress down over your breasts and up around your hips so she can fill her hands and mouth with you, consuming you, body and soul. She tears your stockings, and when she forces you, dress crumpled, make-up running and bare-kneed to kneel in front of her, it turns you on seeing how flushed her cheeks are. The sound she makes when you bury your mouth between her legs, that turns you on, too. The whole horrible mess of you and how wet she is over it turns you on, and after she’s done, seeing your lipstick smeared around her mouth and how fast she’s breathing makes you pull her back down on top of you for another round.   

When you’re done she stands up and buckles her pants and belt so casually, smoothing her hair back with her clean hand and casually wandering over to the lab sink. You watch her calmly clean herself up, making a minor adjustment to her jacket to straighten it, and then turn back to you.

You see yourself how see sees you for a moment: a _mess_. Your clothes are everywhere. Your makeup is everywhere. You’re shaking.  She seems entertained by how you look, but she doesn’t comment on it.

You’ve had enough of that smirk. “Get out.”

She laughs once, unbothered by your tone. She walks past you easily, as if she hasn’t just fucked you and let you fuck yourself completely in one single misadventure. “Always a pleasure, Angela,” she says behind you. The door opens and closes and her footsteps disappear up the corridor.

You’re there alone again.

You sit there for a moment, numb. It’s so surreal that you’re not even sure it just happened. Slowly, you ease yourself off the bench and onto your shaking legs. You pull off your torn stockings and shove them in the biohazard waste. Your underwear, too. Then you spend god knows how long at the sink, even though no amount of water in the world would wash her horrible hands and lips off you. Even when you’re clean and your skin is pink and fresh, you still feel defiled. Disgusted in yourself: you should have done _better_. You’re far too old to make excuses for what you’ve done. You could easily have tried harder to make sure that didn’t happen. Why didn’t you try harder?  

It’s a horribly familiar feeling. You’re surprised how easily it slips back on: why, why didn’t you try harder?

You redo your hair and your makeup. You put your perfume back on. You smooth your dress as best you can and you walk on shaking legs back into that auditorium, aware the _entire_ time of her eyes on you. Because of that, you leave earlier than you intended to.

When you arrive home, everything feels strange. It all looks the same and feels different, like an alternate reality. You go through the motions, hanging up your handbag, slipping off your heels and putting them neatly in the base of your cupboard. You’ve been staring blankly at yourself in the mirror for some unknown period of time when you hear the front door security pad beep and the door open.

Oh, no.

 _Fareeha_. “I’m home!” a familiar voice calls. She sounds cheerful.

You hear her stumble a little as she steps out of her work boots at the door and then come briskly up the corridor to your bedroom. “Angela?” she says as she enters, and you can hear the smile in her voice. “How was it? Were they throwing money at our research centres and fawning over all of your amazing… new…” Her sentence trails off as she sees you. She stops in place, and in the reflection, you can see her smile fade.

She knows something’s wrong immediately. “Angela?” she repeats, but there’s worry in her voice, now. She’s standing behind you in the door way; for a moment you both watch each other in the mirror.

She’s the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. She radiates warmth, and everything about her is perfect. She even looks both handsome and beautiful in her security uniform—she’s everything you’ve always wanted.

In comparison, you feel like you should crawl outside with the recycling. Perhaps you should have done her a favour and just stayed in the labs. You don’t deserve someone with such a heart of gold.

She doesn’t stand there for long. She scoops you up into her arms, worry evident on her face. “What happened?” she asks. You can hear panic in her voice. “Are you alright? Did someone hurt you?”

That’s a trick question. You can’t answer it. You do anyway. “No, it’s just—” You can’t explain what it’s just. She hugs you anyway in her big, strong arms. You close your eyes, wondering if you can just disappear into her.

 “Did one of your patients not make it?” she asks gently, arms still wrapped around you. You shake your head. She guesses again. “Did someone bring up all those old Overwatch rumours again?” she wonders. “Or did they bring up that time you needed to use your pistol to…” She doesn’t say it. She doesn’t say ‘kill someone’, but that’s what she means. “Because you had to do it, Angela. Despite what everyone says. Sometimes you have to do it.”

You didn’t _have_ to do it. You made a choice to, and on reflection, you can think of a million other things you could have done than murder him. You can also think of a million other things you could have done than fuck Moira, but it’s too late now. You’ll have to live with this, too. You rest your head on her shoulder.

She knows you well, too. _Too_ well, because when she gives you a quick kiss on the temple, she pauses just the way Moira did an hour ago.

She’s not smug like Moira was, though. She’s not even angry. “Oh….” Her voice is so, so gentle. “You’ve been drinking.” She doesn’t sound disappointed, even though you know she is. She’s _so careful_ to make sure you can’t hear it in her voice. She would rather die than hurt you. “That’s why you’re upset.”

You don’t try and contradict her. When you close your eyes, tears squeeze out from under your lids and that just makes her hug you even harder.

“Whatever you’re blaming yourself for, it’s not your fault,” she says firmly to you. “And it’s okay to slip up. It’s okay. Everyone does. You can start again sober tomorrow. I _know_ you can do it! You can do anything you set your mind to!”

You know that if she knew just how much you’d ‘slipped up’, she wouldn’t say it’s okay. You feel that creature from the deep swirling around in your stomach, black and heavy like tar.

She has such belief in you, and it’s so, so misplaced.

Just like everyone in that auditorium tonight: toasting you, gushing about you research. They think you’re going to cure death _tomorrow._

Even though you deserve to be kicked to the curb with all your possessions, you let Fareeha undress you and carry you to bed. You let her gently cuddle you, stroking your hair until you think that, actually, it _might_ all turn out alright.

The way she looks at you—with such trust and such love—it makes you feel even more like a teenage mess: dysfunctional, hopeless. Like you’re sixteen again, crying yourself to sleep while your step-parents boast to everyone what amazing marks you’re going to get on your final exams, even though you’re taking them two years early.

She falls asleep before you do, and you watch her chest rise and fall as she peacefully dreams. When you touch her hand she unconsciously curls her fingers around yours and turns a little towards you without waking up.

You don’t sleep, though. You can’t, and you shouldn’t. You need to lie here and suffer for what you’ve done.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have you ever read a story that uses infidelity as a metaphor for addiction relapse? Because you have now :3


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